I'm new to bitcoin but have done lots of reading up on it for the past month. Would love to get into bitcoin mining but with the upcoming 50 to 25 coin payout, I'm a little bit weary about its profitability.

Hello friends !!!I am Menoxen from United States Of America, And I am new on this forum. I think it is best way of learning and communication with you. So help me about this forum I have much interested in business marketing.

Hi I'm not really new to bitcoin, but I'm new to this forum and would like to have my newbie status removed, so i can post in threads relevant to me How does that work? I read my account should be unlocked after 5 posts; but it isnt...

I started investing in BTC on Nov 2011 - pretty late.I have had mixed success with it.

Right now if I converted my BTCs into fiat, I'm still up 5% since I started. But it could have been 40% up if I didn't suck at trading as much as I currently do. One for all, I have spent a good 25% of my investments in GLBSE assets that were plummeting just before the GLBSE shutdown.

Here's a little story for you:I'm customer of a leading bank in my country since many years. Never been overdraft, never had a debt to repay.

Yet one day they refused me a loan that I was well able to pay - in fact half of the money I asked for was already in my current account, and the rest would be covered with less than one year of my net salary. And I had asked for a 3-year loan.

I did not even need that loan. It was a test. To see how much of a valued customer I am.The reason for the refusal was "the amount is too large for your first loan".

The day after their refusal, I retired all my savings with them and turned them into bitcoins. F* them. I'd rather take the risk.

Hey Hey! // I tried posting this intro-Q in another thread but received no replies:

// Welcome all around, then.I am a super-newbie too and have been scanning the forums to make sense of how this all works.After checking with many suggested sites & resources I think I understand this but please, correct me if I'm wrong:

So. I went to http://bitcoin.org/ and dwnld'd the BTC app. Now I install that to have my "wallet" wherein will reside my BTC currency.{I should use TrueCrypt or somesuch to secure said wallet and make back-ups to a flash drive}Do install TrueCrypt to my flashdrive or to my laptop (or both?) ... and ... do this before I install the BTC app?

Next: I setup an account with Mt.Gox that will allow me to buy BCT, but first I need to fund with say, USD and to be expedient, I can use https://www.bitinstant.com/home to take cash to my local bank and have it sent to my Mt.Gox account. Thereafter, I buy BTC at Mt.Gox which will send them to my "address" on the "wallet", right?

(Of course, I can wire-transfer straight to my Mt.Gox and/or eventually explore the options available at http://bitcoin-otc.com/ and https://www.bitcoinary.com , but since I'm new and without experience, feedback, and history, I'm unlikely to get any sellers until I have a few transactions under my belt.{I am however, more than willing to buy with my secured, business PayPal acct, but PayPal is decidedly not the choice among sellers, I see}.

So and again, now that I (will) have BTC in my "wallet" I can send the "address info" in an encrypted buy message to any willing seller for goods or services on say, a Tor marketplace?

Is that about right?

Any suggestions or corrections?Many thanks in advance.

PS. I'd like some clarification of the Mt.Gox exchange too: Can it be used without a "personal wallet"/BTC client to make payments directly from my account to sellers?

PS. I'd like some clarification of the Mt.Gox exchange too: Can it be used without a "personal wallet"/BTC client to make payments directly from my account to sellers?

You can do that if you want to. Just note that if the exchange crashes/shuts down/gets hacked/whatever there's no guarantee you'll get anything back. Also you can't use satoshi dice or anything that auto-returns btc.

In response to brutchell, I guess it would depend on where you are headed with your interests.First, I've been mining for about 2 years and I use the wallets and Mt.Gox to generate cash from the bitcoins I generate.Second, assuming your not mining, I see it more as a means towards speculation, where your "investing" in the concept of bitcoins.Third, your only other direction is purchase of products and or services, which I should caution you to not go overboard with.The whole ideal of a decentralized currency system means that you can get ripped off if you don't understand fully how everything works.Take baby steps and test and research everything first. Much easier to lose a few dollars as opposed to hundreds.

Have been mining for perhaps ten months; I discovered bitcoin due to a warning about a Mac trojan that could steal 'bitcoin wallets.' Having no idea what those were, a quick google search enlightened me. Have been mining on and off since then on a 6870, first in Eligius, then Bitminter, and now in P2Pool. Fairly small scale at a meager 300MH/s, but I'd scraped up a total net worth of 20 BTC and lost it all when GLBSE shut down...